“Why did you not simply speak with myoriginal? He could have told you what was in the files.”
“Mis’ Nakada, someone falsified reports fromPrometheus, and has presumably been suppressing anything fromPrometheus that would contradict them. Right now I don’t trustany interplanetary communications.”
“Ah, I see. Interesting.”
“I hope you can help me.”
“I? But Mis’ Hsing, assuming the data on theship’s systems is accurate, I was recorded almost four years ago.How could I know anything about events that took place just a fewdays ago?”
“Other than what’s on the nets, you can’t,” Iadmitted. “But you presumably know what’s in the ITEOD filesbesides yourself, and why you, or rather the original YoshioNakada, put it there. That might be useful.”
“I suppose it might, at that,” it said. “Iconfess I don’t see how, but I don’t know the details of yourinvestigation.”
“Someone used a high-level Nakada Enterprisesaccount to copy the ITEOD files,” I told it. “I don’t know who orwhat they were after, but if I knew what’s in there, I might beable to guess.”
“Someone on Epimetheus?”
“Yes.”
“Is Vijay Vo still-yes, from the accounts ofmy death I see that he is. What about little Sayuri? Mygreat-granddaughter-do you know her?”
“I know her,” I said. “She went back toPrometheus a year ago.”
“Does that definitively rule her out?”
“No,” I admitted. “But it does make her veryunlikely.”
“Did someone take her place?”
“I believe Mis’ Vo assumed her duties. If youwill excuse me, I think this might go faster if you simply told mewhat’s in the files.”
“You saw the accounts.”
“And the genealogies, and the rest of thestandard wares. It’s the big numbered files that look like peoplethat I want to know about-those, and whatever was in the portion Ididn’t manage to download completely. One of those big files wasyou. Are the others additional iterations of Yoshio Nakada?”
“Good heavens, no! Whenever I backed myselfup-or rather, whenever my original created a back-up, he erased theprevious version. It wouldn’t do to have multiple versions of mearound.”
That last sentence seemed to slow down as theintelligence spoke, as it sank in just what it was saying. Therewere multiple versions of the old man. There were at leasttwo, and since I wasn’t the only one who copied the ITEOD filesthere might be more.
“It’s not clear to me why there areany back-ups,” I said. “You’re too smart to think of it asimmortality.”
“Oh, it could be considered immortality of asort. I’m not the true Yoshio Nakada, but I’m his intellectualdescendent, just as much as the five children he sired, or theiroffspring.”
“That’s not why he did it.”
“No, it’s not. He thought some of ourknowledge and wisdom might be of use to his heirs. In fact, thepossibility of assisting in the investigation of his death hadoccurred to me… to him, and here I am.”
“But just you, no other iterations of YoshioNakada.”
“Just me, unless he changed policy andrecorded one after me. From what I can see, if he did that he alsoaltered the dates and deliberately disguised it as one of the otherfiles that was already here.”
“Or it might be in the seven percent Imissed,” I said. “But I agree it doesn’t seem likely. So whatis in those files?”
“Really, Mis’ Hsing, I’m surprised youhaven’t guessed.”
“I haven’t. I’m obviously a moron deservingyour contempt. Take pity on me and tell me.”
“You aren’t a moron, Mis’ Hsing. I supposeyou just don’t think the way I do.”
I suppressed several choice responses tothat.
“It’s simple enough,” the copy continued.“They’re my family.”
Chapter Ten
I considered that for a moment before I spoke.
“What family?” I asked. “It’s not the entireNakada clan-that’s a couple of hundred people, and there aren’tthat many in there.”
“No, not the entire clan,” it agreed. “Justsome of the key personnel of Nakada Enterprises who agreed to berecorded, but are still alive.”
“Still alive? What about the dead ones?”
“Oh, when anyone I had recorded died, I wouldassess the situation, and either activate the recording andtransfer it back to the secure household systems on Prometheus, orerase it.”
“Activate it? So there are some human-baseduploads living in the household systems?”
“Oh, yes. There were eight when I wasrecorded myself.”
I grimaced. “It might have been useful if theold man had told me that! He said there were AIs in thehousehold net, but he never said any of them used to be human.”
“It’s not public knowledge.”
“I’m not the public; I’m his employee. Ican’t do my job properly if I don’t have all the relevantinformation.”
“You think it’s relevant?”
“I don’t know if it’s relevant, but itmight be.”
“You prefer to have as much information aspossible, I see.”
“Yes. In my line of work I can rarely tellwhat’s going to matter and what isn’t until I’ve learned everythingI can.”
“Obviously, I can’t literally tell youeverything I know-your brain doesn’t have room, even with yoursymbiote and other peripherals. I’ll answer your questions, though,and perhaps if I knew more about the exact nature of theassassination attempt, I could be more useful to you.”
“Maybe you could,” I agreed, and I told itabout the dream enhancer and the euthanasia virus, and everythingelse I could remember of the old man’s words. Which, since I had myimplants working properly and had recorded the encounter, was allof them.
It considered this carefully, then said,“I… he did not actually lie. He said it could be a member of thefamily, or one of their AIs. He merely neglected to mention thateight individuals fall into both those categories. You failed toask for a complete roster.”
“He was supposed to be volunteeringinformation, not avoiding it.”
“Secrecy is a hard habit to break, Mis’Hsing.”
“Yeah. So I’ve heard. All eight of thosepeople would know what’s in the death files here in Nightside City,wouldn’t they?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Would the other AIs? Or the living membersof the family?”
“Ah. Some would, some wouldn’t. Any specificsI might give could be out of date.”
“They’d be better than nothing,” I told it.“Tell me about your family, human or AI.”
It told me. It took awhile.
I had already seen the official genealogy, asI’ve said before, but that didn’t mention any recordings, andapparently some members of the family weren’t necessarily livingwhere the official reports said they were.
As of the day the old man had recordedhimself, the family compound on Prometheus was home to sixteenliving members of the Nakada clan, counting Yoshio, and eight AIsthat had started out as copies of human brains. Nine of the sixteenhad been recorded, and those recordings were in the ITEOD files.Vijay Vo had also been included, as had Narumi Desai, Yoshio’sniece-it seemed she maintained legal residence on Earth, buttraveled a lot, and had spent some time the Eta Cassiopeia system afew years back.
There were dozens of others Nakadas scatteredthrough human space, but it wasn’t clear how any of them could havebeen responsible for tampering with the dream enhancer. On theother hand, after arbitrarily assuming that the old man wasn’tsuicidal, that left twenty-three suspects living in the familycompound without even counting the staff.